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After a long (and delayed) flight on Saturday, I'm back. I had lots of problems with my flights, but in the end I was only about 30 minutes late. That's still not as bad as my friend Jimit, whose luggage was lost.

Alas, I have returned to the dreaded land of "No Internet". My parents are still living in the Stone Ages, and I have to drive to my Aunt's house or elsewhere to have a connection. That's okay, though. I waste too much time online anyway. Besides, I have four more seasons of 24 to keep me occupied.

What I really have to focus on right now is finishing the paint job on my truck. I am in the final stages of priming, so I will hopefully begin painting on Thursday or Friday. I'll try to post some shots.

Sad to see him go

Peter Lindgren is leaving Opeth after 16 years with the band. He is a great guitarist and a really nice human being. His replacement will be Fredrik Åkesson, formerly of Arch Enemy.

Tennis balls and 2-liters

Today (yesterday, to be technical) was my birthday. I have the same birthday as another guy in the REU named Jimit. I slept in until around 12:30, then woke up to do not much of anything. My one goal for the day was to come up with a title for the blog, which I did: the CYBER DERELICT. We'll see if it sticks. I like it for several reasons. For one, derelict can mean bum, and if I don't shave for a while I can start to look like one. As an adjective, derelict is synonymous with negligent, as I may prove to be with this blog, or abandoned, which the blog may become. We shall see ...

The highlight of the day was when Jimit came over and we started throwing tennis balls as hard as possible at an empty 2-liter of Dr. Thunder. Every time we hit the target, you could hear hysterical laughter and clanging dishes from the rebounding ball, soon followed by another BAM and more laughter. Our neighbors were probably wondering what was going on in there. Great fun.

We then enjoyed a delicious veggie pizza from the Mellow Mushroom, another one of those "hippie vegetarian" (not really) joints. The Sierra Nevada brown ale nicely complimented the dish. Also, our friend Laura was nice enough to bake us a homemade chocolate cake, accompanied by Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream. That was very thoughtful.

Birthday no. 22 is not really that exciting. Number 21 kind of steals all the glory. Now I'm another year older, and the same thing is going to happen again next year. And the year after that. And the year after that ...

Thanks, Ubuntu!

It has been over a year since I abandoned Microsoft Windows for Ubuntu Linux. It took a little getting used to at first, but I have absolutely no regrets. Anyone who has known me for more than an hour can testify to the fact that I am an official Linux evangelist. Whenever I see my "less enlightened" friends going through the daily frustration of viruses, malware, and countless Windows updates, I try to proselytize them into switching to Linux. I have a whole sermon worked up. I should probably start handing out tracts.

Ubuntu has made computing a much more enjoyable experience. Most people are amazed that it is free (as in free beer), but more importantly, Linux gives the user much more freedom to control his own computer. And if you find yourself pirating Windows software, you can gain a clear conscience by switching to the hundreds of open source applications on an open source operating system -- most of which are of equal or higher quality than their commercial counterparts.

Ubuntu has brought me countless conveniences and a lot of fun. Look what I found in my inbox:

We at Ubuntu Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

Now isn't that nice?